"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain menfrom injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." (Thomas Jefferson)

Sunday, May 20, 2012

This is great news that he will be able to get his law degree while here on a fellowship. Then he can decide what his next course of action will be. Cannot even fathom what must have been going through his mind when he was able to speak to the people gathered. This is what America is all about -- that beacon of light is still shining as we are witnessing the cooperation from China when most would have bet money that he would never have landed in America.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set the right tone followed up by other State Department officials. Even though he is on a fellowship and did not seek asylum in three to four years the climate can change. It is the fact that our State Department today took the right steps without being confrontational to get him to the United States. They deserve praise for a job well done!

Dissident From China Arrives in U.S., Ending an Ordeal

Dave Sanders for The New York TimesChen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident, arriving in New York on Saturday shortly after he landed at Newark Airport.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal advocate who recently sought refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing, arrived in the heart of Greenwich Village on Saturday, holding the kind of open-air news conference that he could have never imagined while under virtual house arrest in China.

After a daylong and hastily arranged flight from Beijing, Mr. Chen stood on crutches — with a lawyer at his side and facing spectators cordoned off by the police — and addressed a throng of reporters. He said he was grateful to the American Embassy and the Chinese government, which allowed him to leave China, and thanked Chinese officials for “dealing with the situation with restraint and calm.”

“I hope to see that they continue to open discourse and earn the respect and trust of the people,” said Mr. Chen, one of China’s most prominent dissidents, who spoke through a translator near the New York University apartment tower that will become his home.

It was not clear weeks ago that China would permit Mr. Chen to leave, and the United States’ role in his evading the authorities threatened to cause a diplomatic breach just as American officials were seeking China’s cooperation on a range of economic and security issues it considers crucial.

Mr. Chen’s departure from Beijing on Saturday, and the arduous negotiations that led up to it, appeared to reflect careful calculations in both countries that the episode was not worth jeopardizing relations. The Chinese, who were initially infuriated and complained bitterly about what they considered interference in their internal affairs, in the end quietly engaged with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a team of diplomats to defuse the situation.

The trip to New York ended an improbable journey that began in late April, when despite his lack of sight, Mr. Chen scaled the walls around his house, sneaked past the guards who held him captive and was whisked to Beijing by a human rights activist. American officials agreed to provide at least temporary shelter, but the pickup almost went awry: Chinese security cars trailed their vehicle, forcing them to sweep Mr. Chen into their car from another vehicle and race through the streets of the capital to the embassy.

But the drama did not end there. Mr. Chen decided more than a week later to stay in China, only to change his mind several hours later when American officials left him at a hospital and friends expressed fears for his safety. That led to renewed negotiations and eventually to Saturday’s release.

Now, after years of isolation — his every move at his home recorded by surveillance cameras — and serving time in a Chinese jail, Mr. Chen found himself at the center of a media frenzy generated by his release.

But the sudden ability to speak out was bittersweet, which he acknowledged in an interview on the plane. China has a pattern of allowing some especially vocal dissidents to leave the country in order to minimize the impact of their activism at home, and it is unclear if he will be able to effect change as easily from so far away, while he studies at New York University.

“I don’t really feel that happy, but rather sentimental,” he said in the brief interview. “After all the suffering for years, I don’t have those tearful moments anymore, but I do feel something inside.”

He looked calm, but his hands shook as he talked about leaving a country he has tried to change from within for years.

“I’m very clear what kind of role I’m playing right now,” he said. “Opportunity and risk exist at the same time.”

In Washington, the State Department praised the Chinese government in a statement that reflected the United States’ handling of the case from the start: understated and nonconfrontational, despite the emotions and high stakes involved for both countries. “We also express our appreciation for the manner in which we were able to resolve this matter and to support Mr. Chen’s desire to study in the U.S. and pursue his goals,” the State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said.

Her statement referred to the complex understanding — the Chinese were loath to call it a deal — in which Mr. Chen will be allowed to attend law school on a fellowship rather than seek asylum, which the authorities in Beijing would have considered an affront. School officials said they had already stocked a faculty apartment with Chinese food and new furniture for him.

According to Think Progress, “NRA: Practice Range” is billed as a “network of news, laws, facts, knowledge, safety tips, educational materials and online resource” for the organization.The National Rifle Association released a new app on Sunday that includes a gun range equipped with coffin-shaped targets, and the option for players to simulate using a military-grade sniper rifle.

The app includes what it calls “9 true to life firearms,” and allows players to download an MK-11 sniper rifle setting for 99 cents. The rifle can shoot 750 rounds per minute.

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"We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this." President Barack Obama, Newtown, CT, 12/16/2012

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"I don't think that the way to correct a spin from the left is to try to impart a spin from the right.... [A]n information flow distorted from the right would be just as much a disservice as distortion from the left. What we really should be after... is accurate information. And I don't see what any conservative or anybody else for that matter has to fear from accurate information." M. Stanton Evans

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Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY)

“For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you,” he told CNN back in May. “He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress.”

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"We are are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation.

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John Stuart Mill was a 19th century political philosopher:

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." John Stuart Mill.